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Stability of the bedded key roof above abandoned horizontal salt cavern used for underground gas storage

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Abstract

A large number of salt caverns by solution mining are abandoned widely. After reasonable reformation, some of these caverns are expected to store energies, such as petroleum, natural gas, and compressed air energy. Different from other countries, salt formations of China are mainly bedded with lower thickness. In order to improve the mining efficiency of bedded salt formations, solution mining with double-well convection is widely adopted, which brings more horizontal caverns with larger dimensions and also larger roofs. When these horizontal caverns are transformed into underground energy storage, the layered roofs are easily suffered from unbalanced deformation and failure, and then become the channels of oil or gas leakage. Therefore, a series of theoretical analysis and numerical simulation were carried out to reveal the failure mechanism and stability of the bedded roof, and then some meaningful conclusions are acquired. Firstly, in the overlying strata, the argillaceous anhydrite layer is the key roof in the selection of the abandoned horizontal cavern for energy storage. Secondly, according to plate theory, the invalid of the bedded key roof needs to be treated into failure and instability respectively. Thirdly, the analysis on the vertical and horizontal stress in the key roof shows that it does experience a second type of instability. Finally, in order to maintain the stability of bedded key roof, the main influence factors require careful and comprehensive consideration, including the length of the long side, the thickness of the protective salt layer, and the internal pressure.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers and editors for their constructive comments that greatly improved this manuscript.

Funding

This work was supported by the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant numbers 41877277, 51504243, 51674247, and 11702094), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (Grant number BK20150191), the Fund of China Scholarship Council (Grant number 201906425005), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant number 2015XKZD06).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory for Geomechanics and Deep Underground Engineering, School of Mechanics and Civil Engineering, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou, 221116, Jiangsu, China

    Guimin Zhang, Zhenshuo Wang, Jiangfeng Liu & Houquan Zhang

  2. Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, N2L3G1, Canada

    Guimin Zhang & Lili Sui

  3. State Key Laboratory of Geomechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, Institute of Rock and Soil Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, 430071, Hubei, China

    Yinping Li & Zhen Cui

  4. School of Geography, Geomatics, and Planning, Jiangsu Normal University, Xuzhou, 221116, Jiangsu, China

    Lijuan Wang

  5. Department of Fundamental Sciences, North China Institute of Science and Technology, Beijing, 101601, China

    Lili Sui

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  1. Guimin Zhang
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  2. Zhenshuo Wang
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  3. Jiangfeng Liu
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  7. Lijuan Wang
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Correspondence to Guimin Zhang.

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Zhang, G., Wang, Z., Liu, J. et al. Stability of the bedded key roof above abandoned horizontal salt cavern used for underground gas storage. Bull Eng Geol Environ 79, 4205–4219 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10064-020-01830-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10064-020-01830-x

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